The inside story of the development of the realXtend virtual reality platform.

maanantai 18. tammikuuta 2010

Naali 0.1(first public rc) released!

This is it. There are still a number of bugs to fix (some of the code heroes sitting right next to me are currently hard at work fixing and tweaking) and an incredible number of new features to do, but as the version number 0.1 suggests more than a final product this really is a glimpse of things to come. Nevertheless and although I might be considered partial, I still think it's already quite interesting and suggest you try it out for yourselves. Let's take a quick look.

Swimming with the fishes is as pretty as ever. There's of course a lot of room for optimization, but the graphical capabilities have traditionally been one of the focus points in our development and that won't change with the new Naali viewer. You can connect to existing realXtend and OpenSim worlds (sorry, walking between regions is still in the works) or host your own with the realXtend server (new version to be released soon).

Here's a shot of the user interface. We're currently working on enhancements to the visuals and a new layout for the UI, this is an example of some of the functionality. Note that I'm logged in with my Jabber account, which makes it possible for me to communicate with the outside world as well. Currently it's also possible to make video calls (and only video calls, yes, we're working on it) and we have quite a few ideas about future development for the communications module.

Ok pay attention, everyone, because now comes the really important part! We started the work on the new viewer and server software because we had a lot of ideas on how to improve realXtend, but the software architecture we had at the time didn't offer the kind of room for expansion we were looking for. Naali does. And not only room for us to work with, but for everyone interested in it as well. realXtend is an open source project where everyone can participate. The code is available under the liberal Apache 2 license, grab yours today right after you test the binary we prepared for you.

We would love to have your input on what you think about the new viewer as well as the bug reports that will inevitably be generated now that more and more people start testing the software. From now on we intend to make new binary releases more often, which means you will get to see the new features relatively quickly even if you don't want to build the code yourself. The Naali viewer is designed to be cross-platform and we have run tests on Linux, Mac support is on the way as well. I hope there are some enthusiastic Mac and Linux users who would like to join the community and together make sure Naali works equally well on all the platforms.